New Miss America endures racist comments

I'm pretty sure most of you feel as I do about the Miss America pageant: YAWN!

But that's not what I'm writing about. I'm writing about how dumb some of my fellow Americans are.

Nina Davuluri, a born-in-America Hindu with family roots in India, is being depicted in vicious posts and tweets as a Muslim, an Arab, and "probably a terrorist."

A lot of Americans view any male with dark skin wearing almost anything other than a hat as probably Muslim. After 9/11, many a Sikh was treated as a probable terrorist. Sikhism is a religion having nothing whatsoever to do with Islam. It's far more closely related to Hinduism. All Sikh men are expected to wear that headgear consisting of a cloth wrapped around their head which we often associate with India. Hindu men don't wear headgear as a rule, even if they are Muslim.

Davuluri was also criticized for her pride in her Indian heritage rather than her Americanism. Would these same idiots be so critical of a woman being proud of her English, Irish, French, or German ancestry? I don't think so.

How did we as a people become so dumb? Is it a function being citizens in the world's most powerful economy?

Replies to This Discussion

An Indian-American women winning the Miss America pageant is good for Indian-Americans but bad for Indian-American women. It means most Americans have gotten over their racism against Indians to the point that a brown woman (with white features, no doubt) can now be considered fuckable. Welcome to America, where trading misogyny for racism is seen as some sort of accomplishment.

Interesting how concepts change - if we had a time machine, and could transport the uptight, paranoid, Republican, Bible-thumping concept of Red states back to the Mccarthy era, it wouldn't play too well.

Try not to get caught up in simplified, literal definitions. Misogyny is often used to mean more than hatred or dislike of women. It can be manifested as sexual discrimination, sexual objectification, sexual and physical violence, or the denigration of women. Misogyny can be applied to concepts, objects, symbols, actions, and people of other sexes or genders, when such a person is 'read' as feminine. Think of it as the disdain for the feminine or the support of things which harm women.

I'm not convinced it's used that way "often" at all. And dictionary.com lists the meanings as: hatred,dislike,ormistrustofwomen.

I don't think you have any grounds for piling on all those additional concepts. It just adulterates the usefulness of the word since when someone uses it, it might mean so many diverse and distinct things. And, besides, I'm a professional writer and I'm pretty sensitive to how I hear words used.

You're way off base or you're living in a subculture that is misusing the word.

And what do you wanna bet that a majority of those who posted racist tweets about Miss America would self-identify as "Christians"? I wouldn't be surprised if ALL of them were church-going Christians...

I don't know where my mind was when I wrote "Hindu men don't wear headgear as a rule, even if they are Muslim." Anyway, Hindu men in India don't as a rule where headgear, though they might on certain occasions or if they hold a certain office or station (much like American men typically don't wear hats, though they might if they are on-duty policemen directing traffic.) It's not like Sikh men who always wear their dastar when in public. I believe Muslim men wear a cap called a pagri, though I don't think it's necessary for them to wear it at all times.

I can't say I think much of beauty pageants, but I also can't put myself in the mind of a 22 year old Indian American Hindu girl. I do know that, to her, it had a lot to do with making Indians more accepted and better understood..